


Telephone Line

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: The Big Chill (1983)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Depression, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Loss, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Phone Calls & Telephones, Sad Ending, canon infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-25 00:09:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16650535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: Alex had stopped taking his calls, but Michael kept making them, up to the end.





	Telephone Line

**Author's Note:**

> Most of what I write about these guys is in such a comparatively happy Good Alternate Universe, and here I am writing sad, sad canon compliant fic... But something about Michael's mentioning he'd reached out just stuck in my head and popped up when I was looking for one-shot material while separated from my WIPs.

Michael presses the folded paper into Alex' palm. He'd written the number out just in case, the number Alex hadn't needed since that summer before their sophomore year. 

 

"I'll be at the house for a while. Long enough-- Long enough you could call me there, I've been keeping the phone hooked up. I-- I've kept the phone hooked up, so..." He shrugs, biting his lip. He'd kept the phone hooked up almost three years, and sometimes he calls it, just to hear them say to leave a message after the beep, and to hang up before it does beep, because there's no one to play a message back. 

 

He left one once, early on. Then he'd had to erase it himself, felt so stupid doing it that he told himself he wouldn't do that again. 

 

"Are you sure you-- Alone?"

 

"I'm sure. I mean... if you come with me, then... when I sell the house and we both go other places, how would we find each other?" Another shrug, and he rakes a hand through his hair, fingers tangling when he hits the back, where the length is all bound up, and he wonders if he ought to cut it now, if he can sell a house and get a job with his hair like this. Probably not. "I'll be at the house for a while. And you can call me when you're settled and leave me your number. Then when I wind up... I don't know. When I wind up somewhere else, I'll be able to reach you."

 

Or Alex could come with him. They could sell the house and not go to separate places, they could go to the same place, forever, but that's a lot to offer the guy you used to trade handjobs with. It doesn't matter how close you got or what you did for each other or the things other people couldn't understand that only the two of you knew, there... there are unspoken rules in play when you fool around with your roommate on nights when you can't find real dates, and one of those rules is that once you graduate, it's over. You become adults, you head out into the real world, you date women. You forget about the night you kissed, kissing was a mistake. Anything more than the handjobs was a mistake, was too close to something it couldn't be. They both need to move onto separate lives, out in the real world. But even so, Alex is his best friend, and distance won't change that. 

 

It might make it easier. They'll be in separate cities doing separate things, but they'll talk, and Michael will get over the thing they had. 

 

"I'll call you." Alex promises, folding him up into a firm hug. Letting him go with a firm slap to the shoulder, same as he might do with any of the other guys. Which is what they have to be, anyway. "I don't know when I'll be settled with something, but I'll call you when I've got a phone. I-- You can call me at my folks' when you get to the house in one piece, okay?"

 

"Okay." Michael nods, and Alex reaches for him again, squeezing his arm. 

 

"You will. We'll talk soon."

 

"Yeah. I will."

 

\---/-/---

 

He calls a few times, while Alex is at his parents' house. Once, that first summer apart-- the only summer apart, between freshman and sophomore years, before Michael's parents, before spending the next summer with Alex-- they'd had a late night phone call so long they both fell asleep on the line, talking about nothing and everything. Now, the calls get shorter, and he can hear the tension and weariness in Alex' voice grow.

 

Michael doesn't know what he's done wrong, what he's doing wrong, why Alex doesn't seem to want to talk, but he can't bear to ask. Is it because he calls too often, ties up the line when Alex could be waiting to hear from someone else? Because he needs too much?

 

But then he gets a call from Alex in Chicago, and everything is fine again.

 

"Do you like Chicago?" Michael asks, as he sets about packing his things, phone cradled against his shoulder. 

 

"I love Chicago. I like my job, a lot. My parents hate it, but I think I'm doing what I'm supposed to do." Alex says, and the grin in his voice is clear. "Sam says I'm a suit now, but I mean... I'm not really. I mean I have to wear a tie, and I know it's the government and believe me, I know-- But it's... I'm in a position to help other people."

 

"Did you tell him it's a hell of a lot better being a suit than a waiter?"

 

"No." He laughs. "No, it's not, though. I mean... I think what I'm doing can be important. I think if I can make a difference for one person, then I've done something good. But Sam's working hard out there."

 

"Yeah. He's doing a play, he told me. It doesn't pay for shit--"

 

"That's what waiting tables is for."

 

"But he says it's a really good play. I don't know anything about it. It's got 'moon' in the title, I think. I'll have to get him to tell me again. I'll have to call him when I'm settled. I've got an agent waiting on me to move out, to sell the house? I'm, uh... I'm going to the city-- New York? I mean, I think that's where I'll go. And now I have a number for you, I could... I might as well. I just think there's a lot of opportunities there, and there's this program, you know, and they need teachers, and if I did that for a year or two while writing in my spare time, then maybe... Well, I don't know."

 

"A couple years is a long time to look ahead." Alex says.

 

Maybe it shouldn't be, at their age, but it is. 

 

"I know. I could be dead in a couple years. I could step out into the street and get hit by the cross-town bus."

 

"Don't-- I know, but-- don't." Alex says.

 

"Promise I'll look both ways and cross at the crosswalks." Michael grins and flops out onto his bed, his suitcase bouncing. Sometimes Alex is the one to say he could be dead by then, when talk turns to any future beyond the next month or so, and then he'll turn around and fret when Michael does the same, but it's... Michael likes that. Likes the thought of someone caring for him and tutting over him. He hasn't really got anyone else. He can't be casually fatalistic around the others, had learned that in the months after losing his parents, that it disturbed them too much when he turned to the inevitability, the suddenness, the cruel indifference of death. 

 

Well, it disturbs Alex, but not in the same way. It disturbed the others because they didn't like to think about it. It disturbs Alex because he thinks about it too much. But he understands if Michael needs to say it, even if he asks him to walk it back a little. 

 

"You won't. You'll be in New York. You'll step out into traffic with everyone else."

 

"Yeah. But the bus won't hit me if I'm in the middle of a big knot of thirty people." He says, and Alex laughs softly in acknowledgment, more than out of any real humor of the idea. "I mean... I'm just thinking New York, but I haven't made plans. I'm packing stuff up, but I haven't... Nothing's solid. I could go to another city with teaching jobs and a good newspaper. I mean, I guess I would, if... I don't know. If anything seemed better or more convenient than New York, but I know I can get work there, and I don't want to get an apartment I won't know if I'll be able to keep paying for, you know? Especially not knowing how long it'll take the house to go through. It's a real good neighborhood and the realtor says it should go fast but you never know."

 

He could live in Chicago. He would drop his half-made plans if Alex said 'Chicago has schools and newspapers, you know'. If he could move in with him. But Alex doesn't.

 

\---/-/---

 

"How's New York treating you?" Alex asks, and his tone is friendly, but it's off. 

 

"Good. Good. It's... Meg's coming out to New York, that's what Sam said, but I couldn't get in touch with her, so I don't... I don't know. Maybe we'll get together, though, that'd be-- It'd be really nice to see someone."

 

"Yeah. It would be."

 

"You could come out to New York if you-- You could come see me. Or both of us, if she-- I mean... I bet she'd like to get lunch the three of us, if you came out when she does."

 

"I don't know. I think... It's nice of you to offer, but Harold's already--"

 

"Oh, right, of course. Then you'd be seeing, you'd be seeing Harold and Sarah. They're in touch with, uh, with the whole gang, yeah?"

 

"Yeah. Harold says Nick doesn't pick up the phone much these days, but..."

 

Michael hums. Since he got back, yeah. Michael had left his updated number with Nick's folks, and they'd said it was good of him, but Nick never did call. But Harold had said Nick was going back to school. 

 

"It would just be nice to get together with a couple people. It gets kind of lonely sometimes, doesn't it? Big cities, and-- and not knowing anyone."

 

"You've got a girl, though." Alex says. "Harold told me you did."

 

"Oh. Yeah." Michael shrugs, settling down into a chair. "Well... Harold sounded worried, about me being alone, and... we'd told her folks we were dating so they'd, you know... let her focus on her career. I mean, we see each other a little and we scratch the itch and all, but it's not... Neither of us are looking for something serious."

 

There's a heavy pause, and then a non-committal noise on the other end.

 

"What about you?"

 

"Nothing serious. But you know me."

 

There's a laugh that doesn't sound right, and Michael likes to think he does, but he doesn't know what to think today. Everything sounds off, forced. Awkward, when they used to be able to talk for hours, and things were bad for a bit, but he'd thought they were better now.

 

"So you're going to see Harold and Sarah for a little bit?"

 

"Yeah. Maybe for a while. I, uh... I think I'm gonna get fired, actually."

 

It's a relief to think that could be the explanation, but Michael feels guilty for feeling relieved. "I thought you were good at your job."

 

"It's government work, they don't want you to be too good at it." Alex snorts. "Besides, I got arrested last weekend and they tend to frown on that."

 

" _What_?"

 

"I had to pay a fine, it's just some bullshit. Everything's fucking corrupt in this city. I just need to get away."

 

Michael frowns, makes a little noise to show he's listening still. Alex had loved Chicago at first, had had hope, had seen beauty, and now a trumped up arrest and everything looks ugly, well... it's not that he can't understand. But he hates it.

 

"They have quotas, you know. Cops. So they round guys up outside of bars and maybe they put something in your pocket, and-- my feeling is, if I'm going to pay a fine for something, I should get to enjoy it, but..."

 

Michael laughs. "So you'll get away for a while. You can come up and see me, too, if you want."

 

"I'll call you to let you know I got to Harold's safe." He says, and he doesn't say anything else about seeing Michael. 

 

\---/-/---

 

They have a pattern, at least. Alex calls from a new place, and everything is great. Michael calls back and nothing is wrong exactly but he can tell it's not right. This time, though, he comes home maybe a week since they last spoke to a three word voicemail, ' _I fucked up_ '. 

 

He dials the number, hand shaking, not sure what he expects on the other end.

 

"Alex?" He asks, when the phone picks up.

 

"Alex isn't here anymore." Sarah says, and she hangs up on him. He tries calling back, but he gets the machine. 

 

He calls Alex' parents, after that, and they don't know any more than he does. He calls Karen and can't bring himself to leave a message on her machine, he calls Meg, but he doesn't know why he bothers. They haven't spoken in... it doesn't bear thinking about. He calls Sam, who also has no idea, but reminds him Alex sometimes disappears a couple days and turns up feeling fine, that he did it all the time back in college. But that was different, Michael doesn't know how to tell him that was different, because when Alex disappeared for a weekend back in college, he took Michael with him. 

 

He even calls Nick, though he only leaves a lame 'call me back' that he's sure nothing will come of.

 

It's another week before Alex calls him up again.

 

"You had me worried sick, you know?" Michael says, pacing as far as the phone cord will allow.

 

"How's everything?"

 

"Worried! About you!"

 

"I don't want to talk about me right now, Michael." Alex groans. "Tell me about anything else, tell me about you. How's work? How's your girl?"

 

"I'm burned out at work, I'm leaving, I don't make a difference and I can't keep throwing myself at a brick wall, you know I have to buy my own _chalk_? My own chalk! Anyway... we live together but it's financial, it's not, you know. I've been  _worried about you_. I might-- I might write for the Village Voice. If I hear back, if they want me. I was _scared_ , Alex. A cryptic voicemail and then no one knows where you are, our friends hang up on me for asking about you?"

 

"I fucked up."

 

"Yeah, you said. Just-- Where are you? How are you?"

 

"With my folks, until I can get something sorted out. It's..." he sighs heavily.

 

Michael wants to tell him to come to New York again, that he'll take care of him, but even if he could afford to take care of him, he can't put Alex in his bed with him, with Annie on the other side of the wall, he doesn't want to move into her bed to leave Alex his, he can't just stick him on a crappy secondhand couch that doesn't even fold out, and he's asked him before and didn't even rate getting a 'no', the offer just sat there in the cold.

 

"I fucked Sarah."

 

"... _What_? No. No. You didn't. Harold is your best friend, you didn't--"

 

"You're-- They were going through a rough patch, she said. She came down to my room and she said... We drank, but not enough to blame it on. It was... Have you ever wanted to burn a bridge you knew you'd need, have you ever wanted to just burn your whole life down?"

 

He thinks about telling Alex he loved him once and loves him still. That it was real and strong and that he's never known how to quit feeling it. He thinks about how Alex would stumble over his words and say he can't mean it, and how they would pretend to laugh it off, and how they'd talk less and less. 

 

"Yeah. Sometimes." He says. 

 

"We had a drink and she told me things were hard. They didn't seem hard. Harold didn't seem... Harold was happy. Harold, she didn't even tell him she was feeling all these things, but then I thought... I thought it would be so easy to let it happen, when she leaned in and she touched my arm, and I knew she was thinking it. Because she asked me once, back before they got together. Before we moved into the co-op together. She asked me once, and I turned her down then. Harold had eyes for her and I had eyes for-- I went back to the dorm alone instead. Harold liked her then, and I knew I couldn't do serious with her, and if I fucked things up, it would make it weird, hanging out with the whole group. And then we lived together, and it would have been even more of a disaster, and then she and Harold, well... They were perfect for each other. And then she comes down to my room and tells me things with Harold aren't perfect, and I wasn't thinking about Harold, I wish I had been, but I was thinking..."

 

"Alex... look, we can fix this." Michael says gently.

 

"I'm not your problem to fix." Alex says, voice thick and just a little snappish, and Michael wilts at the sound of it. It's a tone he's heard before, but never aimed at him. "All I could think was, if I did this, they'd be relieved when I left. And if I just disappeared and they never saw me again, it would be okay. But we really hurt him. Michael, I--"

 

He cuts himself off, and Michael's stomach feels sick with nameless, formless dread. "Have you talked to him?"

 

"I don't know how to live with this. Fuck, no-- Don't freak out on me, okay? I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm... Fuck... What do you say to a guy when you do that to him? His wife, the mother of his child, and he was so happy, and he invited me into his home because I didn't have anywhere else and I didn't want to go back to my parents' house when Chicago fell through, and he was going to help me find a job, Michael, but he said there was no rush, just treat it like a vacation. Just take a week, two weeks, get your head right after your run-in with the law. I couldn't even tell him what kind of a-- What happened to us, Michael? We all trusted each other with so much, once, what happened to that? Here I am and I'm... fucking my friend's wife and keeping secrets. I didn't even, I don't even-- If I had wanted her and he won her, maybe it would be different, but I just did it to do it, I just did it because she was there and it was so easy and I thought it would ruin everything and I wanted everything ruined. And then... it happened again, and again, and one day I woke up and it was all in flames and... and Sarah's crying, and _Harold_ 's crying, and I stopped and I thought... you know, ruining your whole life, it's not all it's cracked up to be."

 

"Come out to New York." He says, in spite of himself.

 

Alex laughs, bitter, hollow. Michael remembers sitting on his bed, hearing that laugh, Alex' head falling against his shoulder, the way they'd rant to each other until they were too exhausted to say any more, and the way the frustration would build to tears, the way the first time he'd cried in front of him, he felt like he could just die, but Alex had wiped at his cheek with a thumb, and smiled this sad little smile, his own eyes wet, how he'd said this was their secret. And when the world started to be too crushing, they had each other. They could cry against each other. And then once it was over, it never happened. And they'll never be so young again, and sometimes he thinks, for all the misery he remembers, for all the nights he'd cried, especially just after his parents but not only then, for all that, he'll never be so happy as he was then, either. He can't cry with Annie. He thinks she would let him, she would comfort him. They don't owe each other things like love or loyalty, but she's the only friend he's got here, he never can seem to catch up with Meg even though he knows she's close. But it would change the way she would look at him, too. To see him cry for no real good reason, it would change the way she would look at him. 

 

"Come to New York." He repeats, trying to hold back the desperation from his voice. 

 

"I just told you what I did to the last friend who invited me into his home, Michael. I'm not coming to New York."

 

"It's different. You could sleep with Annie if you both wanted and it wouldn't hurt me." He lies. Well, it wouldn't hurt him the way Alex and Sarah had hurt Harold, anyway. "I mean, I might ask if a three-way was on the table. She might say yes."

 

He'd hoped it would sound like a joke. It doesn't. 

 

"I can't... I don't trust myself right now."

 

"So you shouldn't be alone."

 

"It's not about whether I'd fuck Annie, it's about whether I'd find something else to fuck everything up with, and I would, I can think of a couple good ways right now, I-- Don't ask me to do that to you."

 

"That's not what I'm asking. That's not what would happen. Not with us."

 

"Take care of yourself, Michael."

 

And after that, Alex stops taking his calls.

 

\---/-/---

 

He leaves forwarding numbers on Michael's machine-- never when Michael picks up the phone, hears a breath and a click. He keeps leaving numbers where Michael can reach him, but he never answers, never leaves anything but a number where Michael can reach him when he does leave a message. At some point it becomes an exercise in masochism, but it's an exercise Michael keeps repeating. 

 

There's nothing meaningful he can leave on an answering machine, though the whole thing makes him think of calling up his childhood home to hear his parents. Alex moves from one thing to the next and he leaves Michael a number to call, and when Michael calls it, all he gets is the machine. Is it luck, or does Alex never answer his phone, only check messages to see who's worth getting back to? Or is it some kind of ESP, letting him know when not to answer if he doesn't want to talk to Michael.

 

Why doesn't he want to talk to Michael?

 

Had he pressed for too much, on that last call? Sounded too desperate? When Alex asked if he had ever wanted to watch his whole life burn, had he known Michael's thoughts somehow? Was it so unbearable to think he might be loved by him? With everything they once shared, why is it so awful now? What had happened to them, to create this distance, these secrets, the awful, hurtful things? 

 

It isn't only Alex, Meg doesn't take his calls, really. The two people out of the old gang that he slept with, and neither of them will talk to him now. But Meg is busy, and the danger of being roped into a coffee date no one really wants is more immediate when they're in the same city, and Meg was never Alex, and he doesn't care anymore that she doesn't really want to stay in touch. Only that it's another drop in the bucket. Nick never calls back, but Sam and Harold have both said that's just how he is, when he's talked to them, less now than he used to. And Sarah sometimes puts Harold on and sometimes says no one can talk, but he hasn't called them as much since Alex left their place, and Karen... he hasn't talked to Karen in a while, he guesses, they kept in touch at first, but he hadn't been able to afford to get to her wedding. He'd sent a gift and a card, and he'd written a lot, and she'd written back, but life had happened, and...

 

The absence of Alex cuts him the deepest. If he had to rank the empty spaces he feels inside himself since graduation and adult life, though it feels mean to, Alex hurts the worst. But he'd loved all of them and needed all of them. He'd lived with them in that house, where they had been the only family he had left, didn't they know that? But they had their own families then, and Harold and Sarah, and Karen, and Sam, they've all gone on to have their own families. Maybe no one ever needed Michael the way that he needed them. Still, do the rest of them ever ache? Doesn't Alex? Or Meg or Nick? They don't have any more than Michael does. Well, Meg has a serious career, but she doesn't have a husband and kids any more than Michael does. A wife and kids. He doesn't want a wife and kids, but that's not really the point. What he wants is to live in a house with the people he still loves so fiercely that sometimes it feels as if they never left him, and then he turns around and remembers they're gone, or he's gone. Why does growth have to mean change?

 

They'd had dreams once, as a group, they'd dreamed about a piece of land. They'd dreamed about a world that wouldn't separate them, but then... they'd never gotten it, and they'd all had their own private ambitions. Altruistic ambitions, mostly. They'd all wanted a better world, and they'd all had their own ways of trying to make it happen. But they'd abandoned that idea of a commune and then they'd drifted off, a galaxy spiraling ever outward, gradually spinning out past where gravity would hold them to each other. And here he is, lost in space, wanting nothing more than to be with them all again, to see everyone's face. To be back with everyone he'd once called his new family, when he'd first been lost and they had scooped him up. 

 

\---/-/---

 

"Alex? It's Michael. I know you haven't called me back the last five times, but-- Anyway. I work for People Magazine now. I thought maybe you'd want to know. I don't... I don't know why I thought that. What-- what have you, uh, what have you been doing with yourself?"

 

\---/-/---

 

"Alex, Michael. Look, I know maybe you were expecting me to get the hint, a dozen calls, maybe you think I'm some kind of idiot, just... calling again. Maybe I am. But you left me your number, and I just thought... I just thought we could talk."

 

\---/-/---

 

"You're in Meg's area code. You know-- You know, the three of us could-- Nevermind. Of course we couldn't. Well, happy birthday."

 

\---/-/---

 

"Alex... I don't know what I did. Or maybe I do. Sometimes I wonder, and... Call me. Shout at me if you have to. About... whatever. Whatever I did, that has us not talking. Tell me about your life."

 

\---/-/---

 

"So you're back at Harold and Sarah's? That's-- that's good. I'm glad you worked things out. Look, give me a call. About before, I-- Or leave a message, and just let me know-- Just let me know. Let me know you're okay."

 

\---/-/---

 

"Alex... look. Maybe this is about something I said, and if it is, I wish you'd let me apologize for it, but maybe this is about burning bridges. About setting your life on fire. Is-- is that it? Because I just don't understand it... I miss you so much. I don't know what else to say. I lov-- I miss you. Give my love to Harold and Sarah, I guess. Maybe now you've made up with them, I could be next on your list. I'd really like to hear from you. I really-- I really feel fucking _unmoored_ sometimes and I remember how we used to be, and I wonder if you don't feel--"

 

That's all the time he has. He hangs up with a sigh, paces the room a moment, but he's gotten maybe two steps before the phone rings, and it takes him one long stride to get back to it, heart in his throat.

 

"Alex?"

 

There's a tight little gasp of breath on the other end of the line that isn't Alex.

 

"N-no." Harold says, and his voice is so shaky, so shaken, that even before he continues with whatever he's called about, Michael's head is swimming. "Alex is-- Alex has--"

 

It takes him a minute before he can finish his sentence, but Michael is falling in slow motion before he does, it feels like an inevitable conclusion.

 

\---/-/---

 

"Alex, it's Michael. And... I guess someone's going to think this is-- this is pretty stupid, when they clear the machine, for your extension. I know it's stupid, I know it sounds stupid. Believe me, I know how _stupid_ it is. But I wanted to say... I love you. I loved you, and I love you. And it's been a week since you-- Since we all-- It's been a week, and I still... But I wanted to say, it's good to hear your voice. One last time, before someone changes the outgoing message and I-- I don't want to call and hear someone else and know it's over, so this is goodbye, but we'll always ha--"


End file.
